Nintendo Year in Review 2010

We saw this trend beginning to build in previous years. When Capcom released the intentionally retro-styled Mega Man 9 back in 2008. When Nintendo sent a new Punch-Out!!, new Excitebike and new side-scrolling Mario adventure out the door in 2009. But 2010 was where that trend really took hold, as Nintendo, more than any other company, went back to its roots. This was the year of the Big N's retro revival, with sequels, remakes and reimaginings of classic games from yesteryear stepping fully into the spotlight and sweeping aside the recognition for almost every other offering.

There were almost too many to name. But I'm going to try.

Donkey Kong Country Returns. This just-released reimagining from Retro revived a side-scrolling series that had been dormant since the SNES age in the mid-'90s, once again giving us a chance to play as Donkey Kong and his buddy Diddy on a quest to retrieve their stolen bananas.

Kirby's Epic Yarn. It's the first time we've seen Nintendo's Kirby character make a major console appearance since Kirby 64 arrived over 10 years ago. It was a joy to see the pink powderpuff in action on the big screen once again, and even more joyful since the new fabric-focused visual style he brought with him gave us some of the year's most stunning visuals.

GoldenEye 007. Rare's original GoldenEye game absolutely defined first-person shooter multiplayer for an entire era back in 1997, and 2010's revival of its concept managed to accomplish the impossible mission of both paying appropriate homage to the original and blazing new trails with a revamped storyline and control scheme.

(I'm just getting started.)

NBA Jam arrived in October and brought back the over-the-top arcade action basketball franchise we first fell in love with in the early '90s. June's Sin and Punishment: Star Successor brought back a cult classic franchise from the N64 era that America didn't even get a chance to buy the first time around. And March's Mega Man 10 solidified that the strategy of going retro wasn't a one-time grab for attention, but a new and valid way to make fresh games with old-school appeal.

Pokemon had a pretty great 2010. Between the fantastic remakes of Gold and Silver, arguably the best Pokemon games ever made, and the World Tournament that happened this summer, Pokemon was back in near phenomenon mode.

Pokemon defined most of my year, and takes up the bulk of the articles I wrote over the last 12 months. That kind of sounds depressing, but it's also really awesome that I spent an entire year getting to talk about a series that made me the obsessive crazy gamer kid I am today. Plus I got to go to Hawaii and hug a Pikachu.

And those were just on Wii. Over on the DS we got Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a sequel fans have been waiting so long to see that they'd already begun to declare the franchise dead - but, after seven and a half years, it finally arrived to continue the storyline left lingering on the Game Boy Advance back in 2003. Shantae: Risky's Revenge went back in time one more generation, giving us a sequel to a series we hadn't seen since the Game Boy Color.

The Pokemon franchise took a spot on the nostalgia train with the March release of HeartGold and SoulSilver, two titles that brought back that series' beloved Johto region for a remake of the GBC Gold and Silver games from over a decade ago. And, in what might be this year's furthest reach back into Nintendo history, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies became the first numbered installment in Square Enix's long-running DQ series to debut on a Nintendo machine since the original NES.